Intuition, Confidence and Mom Shame
Intuition, confidence, judgement and mom shaming are all intricately connected, I think it’s time we talk about how, why and what we, as moms, can do about it.
When was the last time someone told you, “you’re the mom, you know best”? We live in a society driven by experts shouting on every side. We’re told there is a “right” way to mother and a “wrong” way to mother. The problem is, however, that every expert has a different “expert” opinion about what the right way is. We as mothers are left sorting through a steamy pile of endless information being heaved onto our shrinking laps starting the moment we find out we’re pregnant. We desperately sort through it all for the “right” way to mother our, perhaps even, unborn children. We are being subtly told that we are not enough for our children. Mothers don’t have answers, experts do. Read it again: mothers do not have the answers, experts do. The ways this plays out are varied, but the consequence is not.
The consequence? Mothers have lost their intuition. Or, perhaps more accurately: it was stolen from them.
Stolen by the experts.
Stolen by social media trends and marketing that targets their deepest insecurities.
Stolen by mom influencers who seemingly know the “right” way.
Stolen by well meaning grandparents who say “well my kids survived didn’t they?” but, what we need is so much more than survival.
Newton’s law says, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” A consequence. The action of stealing our intuition has a direct consequence for mothers and the way we perceive, not only ourselves, but the mothers around us as well. When we lose our intuition, we lose our confidence. When we lose our confidence, we are walking into the perfect storm of judgement and mom shaming. And we are certainly in a storm aren’t we? Bring me a mom who has never felt shamed in her parenting decisions, and I’ll bring you one who hasn’t harshly judged another in return.
Brené Brown says that we judge people in areas where we feel vulnerable to shame ourselves: “We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived shaming deficiency.”
So, encouraged by the ease of social media, the additional load of information it force feeds mothers, and the inaccuracy of how people can portray their lives through it, we have become a radically judgmental group of mom shamers. We tear each other down and the very thing that brought us to this mess is perpetuated. It’s a vicious cycle, but, there is a way out.
The corner stone to all of this is of course, that there is no one right way to be a mother. There are as many right ways to mother as there are mothers themselves. And the brilliant truth is that from the moment you got those two little lines on your pregnancy test, you have had the answers for what is the right way for you. And this is the hardest part, this is why being a mother is vulnerable and will always be vulnerable.
This is why it requires being brave and bold and intuitive. It’s hard, but just like childbirth, you were MADE to do this. You were made to find the answers for what is right for you. You won’t know what those answers are right away and I promise that you will make mistakes along the way, but this is all part of cultivating your intuition — it takes time and it’s not comfortable. But, I wonder how much more comfortable it could be if we had experts who were trained to lift mothers up instead of undermining their intuition and authority. What would it look like to have experts who respected a mothers intuitive process?
If you can accept an imperfect journey like this for yourself, you will naturally accept that for all of the other mothers out there struggling in the same ways that you are. Similarly, when you practice empathy with yourself, you will naturally be more empathetic to those around you. If you can accept the vulnerability that motherhood brings to your journey, you will naturally be able to accept others vulnerability as well.
By supporting a mother’s intuition, we can make her a more confident mother. By allowing her confidence to grow, we can soften her insecurities and start ending the toxic culture of judgement and mom shaming that we have allowed to develop. So the next time you fall into a pit of expert information on how you should mother, stop and draw on your intuition instead. The next time you judge another mom, get vulnerable with yourself and ask what is the insecurity that you are projecting onto this other mom?